And the Band Played On
by scarletalphabet
Summary: Angie comes home from an audition one day to hear piano music emanating from the parlors. Since when did Peggy play piano, and since when did she call Mr. Stark's place home?


**Note: **To give credit where credit is due, this was prompted by a tumblr post on stuunalee's blog. I wanted to use the prompted Sinatra song but alas it didn't fit the time frame and I figured if I was going to talk about history I couldn't get that part wrong. The song is The Glory of Love, written by Billy Hill.

* * *

Angie opened the door, ready to collapse on her bed after a trying day. She stepped into the apartment and was about to call out to see if Peggy was home when her ears perked up at an unusual sound. No one else but Peggy should be in the apartment, barring a rare but always pre-planned visit from Jarvis, yet it sounded like someone was playing the grand piano in the front parlor. Not to be confused with the back parlor—it seemed that Stark had a room for everything. Angie shuddered to think what his mansions looked like.

Angie knelt and let her purse fall softly to the floor, reaching on her way back up for the baseball bat that she knew was hanging on the wall. Quietly she stepped out of her shoes and towards the parlor, hefting the bat in her hand to get a feel for it. She lifted it up as she rounded the corner into the room, but froze when she saw that it was no musical thief, but rather Peggy. Peggy, completely absorbed in the music, gave no indication of having seen or heard her, so she quickly backpedaled out of sight. She lay the bat down against the dark wainscoting, noticing with absent interest the "Babe Ruth" scrawl just past the Louisville Slugger logo. Something to come back to later, but for once she couldn't bring herself to care about baseball. With more important things on her mind she leaned against the wall as she tried to recall Peggy mentioning any musical ability at all.

Now that she thought about it, Peggy did seem to linger over the piano when they cleaned the apartment, dusting it with great care. They had both agreed to refuse to impose further on Mr. Stark by using his retained cleaning service, preferring to do it themselves, and Peggy always took care of the piano. She would open the lid to dust the keys, but Angie had never heard her play a note, not even by accident.

Angie broke from her musing to peek back around the corner, catching Peggy's disappointed shake of her head as she evidently played the wrong note. Peggy shook her hands out and launched into a different song with a much slower tempo. She hummed a long for a few notes as she got the hang of the piece, but dropped out as her hands took over. Even when she thought that she was alone, she didn't appear inclined to sing. When she stopped and slid back on the bench, Angie stepped in. "Hey Peg," she called softly, not wanting to break the moment.

"You're home early," Peggy replied, a hint of anxious fear wavering in her voice. "Did your audition go well?"

"Well enough," Angie said, sitting down in the armchair across from the piano. "Can't always trust the judgment of the fellas in charge—saying they want a saint but really always looking for the next Mae West—but I think I'll get a callback on this one." She scooted up to the edge of the chair and leaned in towards Peggy. "I had no idea that you could play," she said, hushed with both surprise at the fact and a twinge of hurt that Peggy hadn't mentioned playing music before.

"I haven't taken lessons since I was quite young," Peggy said, touching the keys gently as if drawing a memory out. "Every Sunday I'd trudge off to spend the afternoon in Mrs. Zeller's parlor. My mother insisted." Peggy's hands began to dance over the keys, playing what sounded like a set of scales. "I never appreciated it as much as I should have, though I've tried since to improve."

"I'm sure that Mrs. Zeller would be glad to hear that," Angie offered, instantly regretting it when Peggy's face fell. "Gee, Angie, way to put your foot in it again," she muttered to herself.

"She didn't survive the war," Peggy explained, her tone darkening even further. She fidgeted with the sheet music in front of her. "I don't know what the newsreels over here showed, but the Blitz affected more than just London. More than just the cities as well when the Luftwaffe overshot or fell short of their targets. The government tried to paint a rosy picture of holidays in the countryside, but try telling that to the women out working all day in the fields to ensure that we had something to eat, or the half-starved kids shuttled off in a disorganized mess to live with strangers." She looked up at Angie, shoulders slumped with the weight of a heavy burden. "You know there's talk about creating a national health service now? 'For the welfare of the people' they say, but evacuation revealed an ugly truth or three. It's rather remarkable we didn't lose more than we did." She looked back down at the keys and continued in a voice so hushed that Angie could barely hear her. "Though some of us lost plenty."

Angie was dying to pry further at that last comment, but Peggy's morose mood was getting almost physically painful to witness, not to mention what it must be doing to Peggy herself. "Say," she asked brightly, "What was that piece you were playing when I walked in? That upbeat number? Sounded awful familiar."

Peggy blushed, though Angie was pleased to see the hint of a smile return to her face. "Oh I haven't got the music, so I'm sure I was playing it at much too haltingly," she rationalized, waving one hand to dismiss Angie's implied compliment. "I'm afraid that I was just working the melody out with one hand."

Angie's eyes widened with delight. "English, I didn't know that you had an ear!" she exclaimed, her mind starting to race with thoughts of practicing her showtunes with Peggy and dragging her to auditions as a trusted accompanist. The ones that were provided never seemed to get it quite right.

"In fact, I have two of them" Peggy replied with a blank face, though the corners of her mouth started to twitch upward with the temptation to laugh at her own joke.

Angie groaned. She had walked right into that one. Still, she'd rather bad joke Peggy than somber Peggy any day, if only since she had little enough experience with the latter. "And a good thing that," she said, reaching out to touch the earring dangling from Peggy's right ear. "Hate to think what you'd like with only one of these."

"Rather like a pirate, I'd imagine," Peggy supplied, seeming eager to follow the tangent. "I don't much fancy a life constantly at sea, but a bit of rum wouldn't be so bad."

Angie couldn't help but picture Peggy at the helm of a ship, a black hat perched on her head just like in the pictures. She'd man the wheel with a steady hand, shouting orders to her lazy crew. Not quite an accurate image as she doubted that Captain Peggy would let anyone get away with sloppy behavior on her ship. She'd need a name though, like Blackbeard or Captain Hook. Captain Peggy didn't quite cut it. Captain Peggy...wait. Angie was overcome by a fit of the giggles at the next image that materialized in her head. She tried to catch a breath to explain to a clearly puzzled Peggy just what she found so funny, but every time she opened her mouth she dissolved into laughter again and had to look away.

When Angie finally regained control of herself she risked a glance down at Peggy, who was looking up at her with a patiently expectant gaze. "Guess you'd have a peg leg then?" she suggested, biting her lip to keep from laughing again.

It was a risky pun, but she was rewarded with an eye roll and a snort of amusement. "You could say I've got two already," Peggy replied, her smile finally broadening to reach her eyes. "That's enough for me."

Seeing Peggy's mood lift made Angie's soar. "Well, don't think that I'm going to let you get away with not telling me what that song was," she teased, shooting Peggy a playful glare.

"And here I was hoping that you'd forgotten," Peggy replied in weak protest. "It's a Benny Goodman number from before the war." She turned back the piano and flexed her hands. "Perhaps you'll recognize it better if I play it at the original tempo."

Angie bit back the retort that Peggy could just tell her the title and stood up to be closer to Peggy and the piano. She soon found her foot tapping along to the rhythm of its own accord as she tried to recall the words. She could hear the commas in each line, breaking what sounded like the chorus up into jaunty segments, and she could almost see the words. "Something about lovers, I think," she mumbled to herself. She began to hum along in hopes that would jog her memory. "Got it!" she shouted excitedly halfway through another chorus.

"You've got to," she sung, only to stop short when the music disappeared. "Well," she said, looking down at Peggy in feigned horror. "Don't leave a girl high and dry now."

"You?" Peggy asked, glancing up at Angie for a moment. "I would never." She set her hands back to the keys to take up the song where she'd left off.

Something about Peggy's comment made Angie gulp with a nervous thrill. A second late, she stumbled into the song with, "You've got to laugh a little, cry a little, until the clouds roll by a little. That's the story of, that's the glory of love." She swayed from side to side with the beat, keeping one hand on the piano to ground her. "As long as there's the two of us, we've got the world and all its charms. And when the world is through with us, we've got each other's arms." Angie trailed off, her face going slack. "Well I'll be damned," she muttered, the curse slipping out as she came to the sudden realization that who she thought of when she sang those words wasn't some faceless sweetheart, but rather a woman about her height with brown hair that fell in soft curls past a face highlighted with bright red lipstick. It was Peggy.

"Angie?" Peggy called softly, drawing her from the swirling eddies of her thoughts.

"Yeah, Peg?" Angie replied, sticking to simple words as she didn't fully trust her mouth to speak what it ought to.

Peggy's brow furrowed as she tried to decipher Angie's mood. "Come sit," she said, sliding over and patting the bench beside her.

Angie sat down next to Peggy, keeping as much distance as was possible without falling off of the bench. There was no brushing this off as if it were nothing, and Peggy deserved better in any case. Her understanding of the depth of her own feelings was still so raw and new that every sentence of explanation that she carefully built in her head crumbled into dust before she could open her mouth.

"Angie?" Peggy prodded again, her voice clipped with concern.

"Do you ever wonder what people see when they hear all the big songs?" Angie blurted out, looking in Peggy's direction but not really seeing her. "When that Frank Sinatra sings 'Someone to Watch Over Me' or even when The Mills Brothers sing 'You Always Hurt the One You Love.'" She shrugged and looked away, shaking her head to clear it. "Of course you don't," she said. "You know. I see that look you get sometimes when those songs come on, when you think that no one's paying enough attention to notice. I have noticed, and I have noticed that it hasn't been happening as much lately."

"Angie," Peggy started, "It—"

"No, it's all right," Angie continued, waving off Peggy's attempt to talk. "You don't have to tell me squat."

"Angie," Peggy tried again, scooting up the bench to Angie. "Would you—"

"Like you'd give anything to be back there again," Angie explained, barreling on as though Peggy hadn't said a word. "I don't wonder anymore. But what if there's nowhere to go back—"

Peggy cut her off with a soft press of her lips against Angie's.

Angie's mouth responded before she could think, pressing back even as she turned in to better reach Peggy. It was messy at first, their lips fumbling to find how they fit together as their legs knocked against each other from the awkward position of being side by side. Angie brought one arm behind Peggy's back to steady herself as she reached up to draw Peggy's head even closer, tangling her hand in the soft waves of Peggy's hair. She closed her eyes as they deepened the kiss, reveling in the heady mixture of relief, desire, and Peggy's perfume. Angie met the demanding pressure of Peggy's lips with her own eager force, leaning into her with a soft moan.

Angie suddenly found herself kissing nothing but air as Peggy started to fall backwards off the end of the bench. She managed to stop herself by reaching an arm out to the piano, hitting every note around middle C with a discordant plunk. Angie quickly grabbed her and pulled her back up. "Geez Peg, I'm so sorry," she said, feeling her face flush bright red with embarrassment as she looked away. "Way to ruin our first kiss, huh?" She'd never given much thought to kissing Peggy before, at least not consciously, but knocking her over was never in the cards.

Peggy reached out and took Angie's hand in hers, interlacing their fingers as she stroked the back of her hand. "There's always the next one," she assured her, punctuating her comment with a quick kiss to Angie's lips. "And you needn't worry about making a good first impression. You made quite the impression on me ages ago."

"The next one?" Angie repeated, her voice wavering with anticipation despite her efforts to sound like a confident tease. "Better find somewhere less dangerous than the bench then."

Angie lay curled up around Peggy in her bed, running one hand along her arm from her wrist to toy with the straps of her nightgown. They'd agreed to take their time enjoying each part of their physical relationship, but Angie couldn't quite bring herself to stop touching Peggy just yet. "English," she murmured, dropping a kiss to Peggy's neck.

"Hmm?" Peggy replied, lazily leaning her neck back into Angie's kiss.

"'Snothing," she mumbled against Peggy, delighting in the feel of the vibrations of her words against Peggy's skin. "'m just happy."

"Good," Peggy declared simply, turning over to face Angie and reaching one hand out to tuck a stray curl back behind Angie's ear. "If I had known that all it took to make you happy was a little music, I might have let you catch me earlier."

Angie couldn't help but smile at Peggy's bravado. Catching Peggy playing piano had been nothing more than a happy accident, and they both knew it. "Maybe later you can play your favorite piece for me," Angie suggested, eager to explore that new side of Peggy as well.

"Only if you sing along," Peggy countered, daring Angie with the fierce look in her eyes.

"For you English?" Angie replied, grinning so widely that she was sure her face would break. "For you, you don't even have to ask."


End file.
